Posts filed under General (2814)

Tim Welch has produced a nice Auckland Cycleways Dashboard (it’s a draft at the moment, or ‘beta’ as we nerds say).

Here are some of the University-relevant routes (click to embiggen, as usual)

These are based on the Auckland Transport cycle counters, which are good for the city centre and major bike paths, but less informative for, say, people commuting in from the south, where there aren’t bike lanes or bike counters.

The tariffs announced by President Trump are based on what he describes as tariffs imposed by other countries on the US. These don’t bear any obvious relationship to the numbers that ordinary economists would describe as tariffs

However, a poster on Twitter, @nonagonono, found there is a strong relationship between the claimed tariff and the countries import/export balance with the US

We want to be a little sceptical of relationships that come just from data-dredging, with no real theory, but this relationship is tight enough that it probably isn’t just a coincidence, and probably does tell us something about the definition of ‘tariff’ the President is using.  If so, the ‘tariff’ of 20% that New Zealand allegedly imposes is actually a trade deficit of 20%, which is not quite what I get from NZ trade figures (24%) but is close enough that some slight changes in definition might explain it.

One News had a story based on a press release from NZ Food Network.  NZFN are a very worthwhile organisation. They coordinate donations and purchasing of bulk food for food banks, which they same amounts to about 45% of  the food being distributed.   If you were looking to donate to an organisation that helps feed people in this country, they look like a cost-effective choice. NZFN also run a food bank survey and a food security snapshot to find out about national needs and supply by food banks.

The headline figure in the press release is that the food banks “provided food to over 500,000 individuals each month”, based on the current survey. That’s a lot.

One News, but not the press release, said this was an all-time high.  Looking at previous annual reports and information sheets from NZFN, it doesn’t seem to be.  NZFN reported 454,000 in the first half of 2024, but their 2024 Annual Report said 655,152 for the second half of 2023 and the 2023 annual report says 480,104.  The number has been close to 10% of the New Zealand population ever since NZFN really got going. The scandal isn’t that the number is up, it’s that the number has been high for years!

What has changed noticeably is the total amount of food NZFN has been able to distribute.  The 2022 annual reports says about 8.6 million kg, the 2024 annual report says 5.6 million, and the 2024/2025 summer newsletter says 6.3 million.  They lost some government funding to purchase food, even as demand was increasing.  (If you look at the current press release you see a higher number that that for total food distributed, but I think that’s total distributed by the food hubs, rather than by NZFN)

I said “the number” is close to 10% of the population.  It’s a bit hard to find out exactly what this number means: is it genuinely unique people fed per month? Do the food hubs actually count how many people each recipient is feeding, and track individual visitors?  The reason I’m a bit suspicious about the number is a 2023 press release

Over half a million people are now being supported by NZFN food hubs each month but there is still a growing need. That works out to 1,868,491 more people being supported by NZFN, than they were in January 2020.

It’s not possible to get a total number of extra people from a monthly number, because you’d need to track individual people over the whole year; you can only get total number of visits.  Given this, it looks possible that that the 500,000 per month might also be total number of visits rather than unique monthly visitors.  It would still be a lot, either way.

You might think that I should answer this question by contacting NZFN rather than guessing.  I’m not sure I (as a One News reader) should have to, but I did actually try that.

Team Ratings for Week 15

The basic method is described on my Department home page.
Here are the team ratings prior to this week’s games, along with the ratings at the start of the season.

Performance So Far

So far there have been 112 matches played, 81 of which were correctly predicted, a success rate of 72.3%.
Here are the predictions for last week’s games.

Predictions for Week 15

Here are the predictions for Week 15. The prediction is my estimated expected points difference with a positive margin being a win to the home team, and a negative margin a win to the away team.

Team Ratings for Round 21

The basic method is described on my Department home page.
Here are the team ratings prior to this week’s games, along with the ratings at the start of the season.

Performance So Far

So far there have been 140 matches played, 105 of which were correctly predicted, a success rate of 75%.
Here are the predictions for last week’s games.

Predictions for Round 21

Here are the predictions for Round 21. The prediction is my estimated expected points difference with a positive margin being a win to the home team, and a negative margin a win to the away team.

Team Ratings for Week 8

The basic method is described on my Department home page.
Here are the team ratings prior to this week’s games, along with the ratings at the start of the season.

Performance So Far

So far there have been 34 matches played, 24 of which were correctly predicted, a success rate of 70.6%.
Here are the predictions for last week’s games.

Predictions for Week 8

Here are the predictions for Week 8. The prediction is my estimated expected points difference with a positive margin being a win to the home team, and a negative margin a win to the away team.

Team Ratings for Round 14

The basic method is described on my Department home page.
Here are the team ratings prior to this week’s games, along with the ratings at the start of the season.

Performance So Far

So far there have been 65 matches played, 43 of which were correctly predicted, a success rate of 66.2%.
Here are the predictions for last week’s games.

Predictions for Round 14

Here are the predictions for Round 14. The prediction is my estimated expected points difference with a positive margin being a win to the home team, and a negative margin a win to the away team.

Team Ratings for Round 5

The basic method is described on my Department home page.
Here are the team ratings prior to this week’s games, along with the ratings at the start of the season.

Performance So Far

So far there have been 32 matches played, 18 of which were correctly predicted, a success rate of 56.2%.
Here are the predictions for last week’s games.

Predictions for Round 5

Here are the predictions for Round 5. The prediction is my estimated expected points difference with a positive margin being a win to the home team, and a negative margin a win to the away team.

Team Ratings for Week 5

The basic method is described on my Department home page.
Here are the team ratings prior to this week’s games, along with the ratings at the start of the season.

Performance So Far

So far there have been 27 matches played, 17 of which were correctly predicted, a success rate of 63%.
Here are the predictions for last week’s games.

Predictions for Week 5

Here are the predictions for Week 5. The prediction is my estimated expected points difference with a positive margin being a win to the home team, and a negative margin a win to the away team.

Nature magazine (yes, that one) has a headline 75% of US scientists who answered Nature poll consider leaving.

This is a more honest phrasing that one usually gets in bogus poll headlines, but it’s still bogus.  The ‘poll’ was

Responses were solicited earlier this month on the journal’s website, on social media and in the Nature Briefing e-mail newsletter. Roughly 1,650 people completed the survey.

The other problem with the poll is that ’emigrational ideation’, as one might call it, is a very low bar. Lots of people consider doing things. Many fewer actually do them. People having been claiming they are considering leaving the US for a long time, and we don’t know from the ‘poll’ how the current numbers compare to the usual state of affairs. Remember this cartoon, from 2006:

In fact, I think it’s quite likely that there are more scientists than before actively looking into leaving the US.  Anecdotally, we are getting more enquiries here and more US applicants to advertised positions.  You might think this sort of anecdata is a pretty weak basis for conclusions . You’d be right, but it’s still better than a bogus poll.